2016, Good or Bad?

I recently heard someone commenting on what a bad year 2016 had been. I was a little intrigued so I asked what had made the year so bad. So they began to list off the celebrities who had passed away in 2016. I wasn’t sure how many there were or even who they were so I googled it, and sure enough there were a pile of celebrities, major and minor, who died over the past 12 months. Some I knew and some I didn’t have a clue who they were.

But if 2016 was a bad year, and I’m not convinced it was, wouldn’t it have been a bad year because of the 16,913 civilians who died in Syria or the hundreds of thousands of other innocents around the world who lost their lives at the hands of despots and terrorists?Without wanting to minimize the death of anyone, sometimes I think we grieve for celebrities because it keeps our eyes off our failure as humanity.

Regardless of your political views, there were 34,696 Syrian refugees who came to Canada in 2016 who may very well have been killed if they had stayed in Syria. And I would suspect that made 2016 a pretty good year for them. Have a great week and remember: To see what is really possible, you will have to attempt the impossible.